The daunting task of deciding what bike would be good for
our intended purpose wasn’t made any easier with the lack of touring bikes
available in our local bike shops,

even in a place like London. Most of the bike shops cater for the
commuter, road racer or mountain biker.It’s easy enough to find what you want on the internet, but it all lacks
the crucial part of buying a touring bike, and that is to make sure the fit is
correct and that you get the correct frame size.

Seeing that this is our first adventure on bicycles and the
fact that our knowledge wasn’t too great to start with, led us to the obvious
choice of buying a complete bike, instead of a frame and building it up with
components we think will work. This in
itself could also be a very expensive exercise.

Our main criteria for choosing a bike was of course to
have a steel frame.Most touring bikes
will be made of steel, but you get the odd one out. Deliberations and discussions, pros and cons
were looked at and eventually, it was decided to go for the tried and tested
Surly Long Haul Trucker with 26” wheels.They also have a frame small enough for Mandy. All our research suggested that you can’t
really go wrong with this one; it’s got a good reputation with a ‘no-frills’
approach.

Our second good decision was to get our bikes from Brixton
Cycles (obviously located in Brixton, London).Not really local to us, but close enough not to have to travel half way
across the country to try out the bikes and sizes. We received top service from them from the
time we walked in, spending loads of time with us, talking about this, that and
everything else and answering my million and one questions.Really just being very helpful and good customer
service.

Initial plan was to not change much from the standard
set-up, sticking with the drop bars. The
plan was to only change a few things on the bars itself, adding cross brake
levers and moving the bar-end shifters to sit on top of the bar.This would’ve been fine on my wider bar, but
seemed problematic on Mandy’s narrower bars.
The brake levers and shifters didn’t really fit on top, and even if they
managed to fit it, would’ve left it very crowded and not a lot of space for
anything else.For this very reason we
decided to change the drop bars to mountain bike type straight bars. This also enabled us to change our braking
system, seeing that we had to buy the brake levers etc.We changed from the average cantilever breaks
to the more powerful V-brakes which should help us stop a bit quicker, should
we need to.

Besides from changing the handlebars and brakes, not much
else changed. We invested in some Ergon
grips and bar ends to relieve a bit of the pressure on our hands, and also
decided to change our pedals.A lot of
people tried to convince us to use cleats or one of the other systems where
your feet are locked in. We decided
against this for a couple of reasons; we’ve never used cleats and using cleats
will also mean that we’ll need to carry another pair of shoes.This might be ok for Mandy, because her feet
are small, but if you have ‘ships’ like me, it cause all sorts of problems with
space. Keeping all of this in mind, we
decided to once again support Ergon and use their platform
pedal.To date the new pedals seem to
work really well – easy to place your foot in the right position and very
comfortable with a big platform area.
We’ve yet to experience any hotspots on our feet.Fingers crossed they perform well and are
durable.

Choosing our pannier bags and racks wasn’t too difficult
either. We decided on Ortlieb Roller
Classic, front and back, for the panniers with the Ortlieb bar bag.Again, mostly good reports on these, with the
odd person not liking it that much. We also
decided to rely on German engineering for our pannier racks and decided on
Tubus Logo rear rack and Tubus Ergo for the front.

Finally, a touring bike won’t be complete without a
comfortable place to sit, and for this we decided to (once again) go with a
tried and tested product.Brooks saddles
have been around for over a hundred years and not much has changed. We decided on the Brooks B17 Imperial saddle,
with the all important ‘cut-out’ to relieve a bit of the pressure on those
delicate bits.It takes a little while
to get comfortable (or broken-in), seeing that it’s leather. After the initial 200km of riding, it was
just about comfortable.Let’s hope it
serves us well.

Things we need to get to quickly will be kept in the Ortlieb Ultimate 5 Plus Bar Bag. This bag is big enough to carry most of our important documents and Mandy's smaller camera. Waterproof, durable and you can lock the bag to the bike with the secure lock mechanism.

Schwalbe is has been around for a long time making very good road, mountain bike and also touring tyres. We were hoping to use the very popular Schwalbe Marathon XR, but for some unknown reason, Schwalbe decided not to make this one any more. They replaced it with the 'new and improved' touring tyre (according to the marketing gurus at the factory) which is the Mondial. The size we're using is 26" x 2.00. Fingers crossed it is as good as the Marathon XR and if all goes well, we might even be able to finish our trip on them. We did however decided to each carry one Mondial foldable tyre, just to be on the safe side.

We will each be carrying a pair or rear (blue picture) panniers, each with 20ltr capacity, as well as a pair of front (orange picure) Roller Classic panniers, each with 12.5ltr capacity. We will also use each have a 22ltr roll bag on the top of the rear rack for sleeping bags and the tent. That will give each of us a combined capacity of 87lts. Just big enough for the kitchen sink...

The very big and very comfortable Ergon pedal. As mentioned before, we won't be using cleats or clip-ins, mainly for practical reasons. Again, a German product, with a lot of thought going into the design and engineering process. Indeed a very comfortable pedal, made from top quality parts, joining up with companies like Busch and Muller who are well known for their excellent lights. B&W is responsible for the reflective bits on the pedal.

All our gear will be carried on Tubus racks. The rear Tubus Logo rack can carry up to 40kg and the front Tubus Ergo rack can carry up to 25kg. I'm confident it will be able to cope with our load of approximately 5-6kg in the front and about 15kg on the rear. After all, the last thing you would want is to have a rack break half way through a trip.